D&D 5E Obojima: Tales from the Tall Grass

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

I don't know how many sales a book has to have for WotC to consider it a success. It would be interesting to see how many of the top Kickstarter books would quality as a success in their eyes, if we could get that target number. (I assume there's at least a loose number, even if variables affect when a given project is considered successful or not.)

They said from the beginning that they want every book to hit 100,000 sales. The vast majority have just with big box sales and the PHB is averaging that (or more) per year.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

They said from the beginning that they want every book to hit 100,000 sales. The vast majority have just with big box sales and the PHB is averaging that (or more) per year.

Wow, 100k is a benchmark I don't know if anyone else in the industry is hitting. That feels a little unfair to them, frankly.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

Wow, 100k is a benchmark I don't know if anyone else in the industry is hitting. That feels a little unfair to them, frankly.

Unfair, how?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Unfair, how?

Because it requires them to only go for the topics they can tell their bosses have the best chance of selling at a very high level. Things that are more experimental or unusual, even if they are likely to be fantastic, are going to be less likely to be greenlit, as their goal is to sell at an extraordinarily high level.

I write for a living in my job and I have a benchmark for what counts as a successful work. But the benchmark is relatively low. I still have to produce a work of quality that has sufficient appeal and depth, but I can get there in a lot of different ways, which encourages me to try new and different things all the time. Some of them hit massively, clearing the benchmark hundreds of times over. Sometimes, they just narrowly clear the benchmark.

The stuff that hits biggest is pretty circumstantial and relies on things not entirely under my control (other than bringing my A-game to it, which isn't sufficient to hit big like this by itself). But I could probably consistently clear the benchmark several times over doing fairly rote, very generic kinds of content. But that content would never hit big in the same way as the more experimental, somewhat circumstantial does.

Maybe I'm wrong and 100k is an easy benchmark for WotC to clear, but I doubt it. A number that size relies on trying to get as many customers to like a product well-enough every time, which means not going for stuff that's going to be the best thing ever for a smaller segment -- but guarantee close to 100% of them to purchase it. And it means that large, relatively safe product isn't going to be anyone's all-time favorite product either, because it's trying to satisfy as many people as possible, every time.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

Because it requires them to only go for the topics they can tell their bosses have the best chance of selling at a very high level. Things that are more experimental or unusual, even if they are likely to be fantastic, are going to be less likely to be greenlit, as their goal is to sell at an extraordinarily high level.

I write for a living in my job and I have a benchmark for what counts as a successful work. But the benchmark is relatively low. I still have to produce a work of quality that has sufficient appeal and depth, but I can get there in a lot of different ways, which encourages me to try new and different things all the time. Some of them hit massively, clearing the benchmark hundreds of times over. Sometimes, they just narrowly clear the benchmark.

The stuff that hits biggest is pretty circumstantial and relies on things not entirely under my control (other than bringing my A-game to it, which isn't sufficient to hit big like this by itself). But I could probably consistently clear the benchmark several times over doing fairly rote, very generic kinds of content. But that content would never hit big in the same way as the more experimental, somewhat circumstantial does.

Maybe I'm wrong and 100k is an easy benchmark for WotC to clear, but I doubt it. A number that size relies on trying to get as many customers to like a product well-enough every time, which means not going for stuff that's going to be the best thing ever for a smaller segment -- but guarantee close to 100% of them to purchase it. And it means that large, relatively safe product isn't going to be anyone's all-time favorite product either, because it's trying to satisfy as many people as possible, every time.

Ok, it was more of an unfair to whom question I should have asked. I was not thinking about from that perspective.

However, since even there worst reviewed projects are hitting this mark, maybe it is not that unfair! I do get your point, but I wouldn’t of framed it in terms of fairness.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

However, since even there worst reviewed projects are hitting this mark, maybe it is not that unfair! I do get your point, but I wouldn’t of framed it in terms of fairness.

True! Maybe the "play it safe" number is 500k or something.

And I'm sure we could find people who think WotC plays it too safe and people who think that their recent products have been too non-traditional.

 

[Azzy]

It's because lots of people don't want anime influence in their D&D. Look at 4E to see how well that turned out.

Thanks for bringing edition warring into this thread. ENWorld really needed that.

 

[beta-ray]

I don't know. WotC has 45 million different MTG worlds. I find it hard to believe that they couldn't have one with Final Fantasy aesthetics (I suspect they already have several) and then WotC could take the most D&D-like one, adapt it like they have the other settings, by making it adhere more to D&D ways of doing things, and be most of the way there.

I'm not at all knowledgeable about Magic the Gathering, but did see this and thought it was amusing in light of this conversation.

 

[ProfessorDetective]

Saw an ad for this on the latest episode of Fool's Gold and I like what I'm seeing. My Platonic ideal of D&D (I think I mentioned this in that last Zelda/Ghibli thread) has always been:

Crossing vast, picturesque, landscapes, either by road, rail, or airway...
Delving into crumbling temples and ruins for lost treasures/magics/technology...
Passing through quaint villages full of quirky characters and creatures...
Exploring the large cityscape at the center of civilization...
Saving the world from evil, usually an ancient weapon of mass destruction...
A forgotten, moss-covered, vending machine, stocked with Goodberry Wine...

If this sounds like Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom/Adventure Time with Eberron/Final Fantasy/Animal Crossing elements blended in... Yeah, basically... This book SEEMS to be on a similar wavelength, so I'll be keeping my eye on it.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Saw an ad for this on the latest episode of Fool's Gold and I like what I'm seeing. My Platonic ideal of D&D (I think I mentioned this in that last Zelda/Ghibli thread) has always been:

Crossing vast, picturesque, landscapes, either by road, rail, or airway...
Delving into crumbling temples and ruins for lost treasures/magics/technology...
Passing through quaint villages full of quirky characters and creatures...
Exploring the large cityscape at the center of civilization...
Saving the world from evil, usually an ancient weapon of mass destruction...
A forgotten, moss-covered, vending machine, stocked with Goodberry Wine...

If this sounds like Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom/Adventure Time with Eberron/Final Fantasy/Animal Crossing elements blended in... Yeah, basically... This book SEEMS to be on a similar wavelength, so I'll be keeping my eye on it.

My thought is that, at worst, this is going to provide a lot of content that can be repurposed. It wouldn't have occurred to me to have something so glaringly gamist as a vending machine full of adventuring gear, but I can easily think of situations where that would fit in fine, when I'm not trying to have a more "realistic" game world.

Likewise, if they give simple rules for incorporating technology other than just modern weapons into a fantasy game, it's not hard to see wanting to use those in other appropriate settings as well.

At this point, I want products because they are immediately useful to me at the table, because they're expanding what I can do in the game, or both. And this looks like a both product to me, even if it only delivers 75% of what it's promising.